John Stivers – Peak Oil

Video Transcript:

Peak oil is something that we’ve been anticipating for a long time. It’s when our demand all of a sudden intersects the point at which the petroleum that’s coming out of the ground starts to wane, so that the elasticity of our marketplace is no longer one of a lot of suppliers meeting the demands of a lot of customers. And when that happens, we end up finding ourselves in a bidding contest for that product that remains, and the prices start to jump significantly, even though the same amount is being produced.

So if you go to the farmer’s market back on the day before Thanksgiving and there’s a bunch of guys there with cranberries for sale, in the morning they all realize, geez, everybody’s got cranberries for sale. And the first couple of people that walk through the market realize that and they’re into a competitive situation where they’re negotiating with the sellers. So lo and behold, about 3:00 in the afternoon, all the guys but a couple, maybe one guy, has cranberries left. Okay? And a couple of stragglers like me come in and, oh, I’m supposed to pick up cranberries before I get home tonight, and you walk up and there are 3 or 4 of us that walk to that one remaining farmer that’s at the market. And now it’s a bidding war as to who gets the last bag of cranberries. And that’s what transaction occurs when you hit peak oil.